DANCE

DANCE; A Showcase Comes Into Its Own

By ANNA KISSELGOFF

Published: July 9, 2000

T.S. ELIOT was right when he said that art does not improve (is Rembrandt worse than Picasso?). But artists, including choreographers, can develop -- as New York City Ballet's Diamond Project confirmed recently.

Learn by doing: that is the premise of the project, named after its principal donor, Irene Diamond. Peter Martins, City Ballet's artistic director, initiated this showcase for new choreography in 1992, repeated it in 1994 and 1997 and hit pay dirt with this spring's series.

Six of the eight choreographers responsible for the nine premieres had participated in the Diamond Project in the past and the repeated opportunities proved justified. Christopher Wheeldon, still a relative novice in 1997, now looked like a young master.

The level of accomplishment was also matched by the seriousness of musical choices: Shostakovich, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, balanced by a star of contemporary music, John Adams, and classically trained crossover composers (Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor, John King). This is not the range of music you will hear in other ballet companies.

The strongest entries came from Mr. Martins, Helgi Tomasson and Mr. Wheeldon. One might ask why the second-tier works are worth doing. The fact is that City Ballet rarely restages works from other companies. Even George Balanchine encouraged new works, however bad, from his disciples. At the least, fresh choreography is a novelty for dancers and audiences, although the choreographers conduct their education in public -- for better or for worse.

This year was for the better. Just when it seemed time to suggest once more that the choreographers could widen their vision by moving away from a strictly plotless genre, the pure-dance ballet justified itself again.

Plotless does not mean an absence of emotion. Mr. Tomasson's ''Prism'' has the same formalist elements as its score, Beethoven's First Piano Concerto. Yet for all its nod to Balanchine's neo-classicism, its underlying verve, especially in the male dances, is distinctly felt. It is a big ballet, opening with swiftly paced contrasting trios amid the ensemble. The slow second section is visualized in the quiet eddies of a duet for Maria Kowroski and Charles Askegard, eerily backed up by seven couples in the shadows. The exuberant third movement opens with a bravura solo, danced by Benjamin Millepied with effective if free-form abandon.

If you don't like to see the steps of the academic idiom recombined in novel ways, then the Diamond Project and the City Ballet are not for you. Even in Mr. Martins's ''Todo Buenos Aires'' (to music by Astor Piazzolla, arranged by Mr. Adams), a tango is absorbed into the classical vocabulary. Wendy Whelan's fierce toe work went smoothly along with the tango's leg flicks; Albert Evans and Philip Neal vied for her affections. In a second trio, Nikolaj Hubbe and Robert Tewsley had the right snap as two posturing macho characters in joint possession of Darci Kistler, the local coquette. Another dancer, Damian Woetzel, was similarly in his element as the airborne leader of a second Martins-Adams piece, ''Slonimsky's Earbox.'' It sent brightly clad dancers scattering across the stage like colored marbles.

The most striking ballet was Mr. Martins's ''Harmonielehre,'' inspired by Mr. Adams's sly tribute to Arnold Schoenberg and his treatise on musical harmony. Mr. Adam's liner notes served as a subtext for both the choreography and Alain Vaes's decor, depicting earth and sky. The first section's energetic circling was part of the creation-of-the-world aura, firmly rooted in the classical technique used overtly in a lyrical duet for Janie Taylor and Jared Angle. In contrast to the initial ebullience, an entangled trio for Ms. Kistler, Jock Soto and Mr. Askegard symbolized a fall from grace.

A childlike view of heaven, with clouds of blue chiffon suspended above a female ensemble in the same chiffon, ushered in a startling passage. James Fayette arrived with Ashlee Knapp, a 14-year-old student from the School of American Ballet, on his shoulder (Mr. Adams had dreamed that his young daughter was carried by Meister Eckhardt, a medieval mystic). The purity of the image, extended into off-balance contours, was magnificently rendered by the two dancers. With its celebratory finale and a hint of salvation, the ballet became a treatise on harmony in the widest sense.

MR. WHEELDON gave energy a geometric edge in tune with Shostakovich's First Piano Concerto. He avoided regimentation, but his dazzling and shifting ensembles had the epigrammatic wit of a jubilant parade. ''Mercurial Manoeuvres'' was the right title.

Robert La Fosse and Robert Garland choreographed ''Tributary,'' a pretty and charming Mozart ballet. It was a piece d'occasion, honoring Arthur Mitchell, the City Ballet star who founded and now directs Dance Theater of Harlem. Dancers in both companies were ingeniously mixed in the ensemble, with Kyra Nichols as the gracious ballerina.

Christopher d'Amboise's masterful deployment of dancers in ''Triptych'' and his use of odd shapes (arms in jarlike formation) were tantalizing. Set to Bartok, his ballet impressed itself strongly on the eye, but did not leave an equally strong after-image. Mr. O'Day found less support in Mr. King's jagged score for ''Swerve Poems,'' which had some cheeky dancing and too many non sequiturs. Miriam Mahdaviani was happier in her inspiration for ''Appalachia Waltz.'' She matched Mr. Meyer and Mr. O'Connor in their gloss on American folk music. Her ruling conceit was a square dance for classical dancers. It had its fine moments, like the Diamond Project as a whole.

Photo: Ashlee Knapp and James Fayette in Peter Martins's ''Harmonielehre'' for New York City Ballet, set to a score by John Adams. (Paul Kolnik/New York City Ballet)